The Poetics of Imitation in the Italian Theatre of the Renaissance / Salvatore Di Maria.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Di Maria, Salvatore, author.

Series:

Toronto Italian studies.

Toronto Italian studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Italian drama--To 1700--History and criticism.

Italian drama.

Imitation in literature.

Classical drama--Influence.

Classical drama.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (233 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Toronto : University of Toronto Press, [2017]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

DiMaria delves into how playwrights not only brought inventive new dramaturgical methods to the genre, but also incorporated significant aspects of the morals and aesthetic preferences familiar to contemporary spectators into their works. By proposing the theatre of the Italian Renaissance as a poetic window into the living realities of sixteenth-century Italy, he provides a fresh approach to reading the works of this period."--Pub. desc

"The theatre of the Italian Renaissance was directly inspired by the classical stage of Greece and Rome, and many have argued that the former imitated the latter without developing a new theatre tradition. In this book, Salvatore DiMaria investigates aspects of innovation that made Italian Renaissance stage a modern, original theatre in its own right. He provides important evidence for creative imitation at work by comparing sources and imitations - incuding Machiavelli's Mandragola and Clizia, Cecchi's Assiuolo, Groto's Emilia, and Dolce's Marianna - and highlighting source elements that these playwrights chose to adopt, modify, or omit entirely

Contents:

Chapter I. Imitation: The link between past and present

1. The Humanists turn to the Ancients

2. From the Classical stage to the theater of Renaissance

3. The poetics of the new theater

Chapter II. Machiavelli's Mandragola

1. The characters: imitation vs. source

2. New characters

3. Machiavellian morality

Chapter III. Clizia. Form stage to stage

1. The sons

2. The fathers

3. The wives

4. A Machiavellian perspective

Chapter IV. Cecchi's Assiuolo: An apian imitation

1. A contaminatio of sources

2. Ambrogio: An original amator senex

3. Oretta's immorality as a reflection of the times

Chapter V. Groto's Emilia: Fiction meets reality

1. From the sources to the adaptation

2. The stage pretense of realism undermined

3. Erifila: a Venetian courtesan.

Chapter VI. Gli duoi fratelli rivali. Della Porta adapts Bandello's prose narrative to the stage

1. The source's King vs. the play's Viceroy

2. Eufranone vs. Lionato

3. The women

4. New characters and the comic element

Chapter VII. Orbecche: Giraldi's imitation of his own prose narrative

1. The plot

2. Orbecche and the question of womanhood

3. Sulmone vs. Malecche: The debate on kingly prerogatives

4. Machiavellian princeship anchored to religious morality

Chapter VIII. Dolce's Marianna: From history to the stage

1. The historical source

2. Josephus' Herod vs. Dolce's Erode

3. Mariamme vs Marianna

4. Erode and the theater audience.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references ([199]-212) and index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 13. Sep 2017)

Other Format:

Print version:

ISBN:

9781442667341

1442667346

9781442667334

1442667338

OCLC:

865475025